Qorma Recipes

I've prepared this Indian curry called korma countless times since I got married. I learned this dish from my husband Lulu's aunt (I call her Phoopi). It's a very flexible dish that allows for many combinations of meat and vegetable. Chicken, beef, goat, potato, taro and various vegetables (peas, carrot, broccoli) are commonly used. The spicy gravy is what's constant.

The gravy is made of fried onion paste and yogurt and is flavored with ginger-garlic paste as well as several Indian spices. This version contains beef but you can easily omit the meat if you're preparing a vegetarian version.

Mutton meat stew is one of our family's special occasion dishes whenever one of my husband Lulu's relatives come from dinner. I've shared several other versions in the past, but this week, I made the gravy with freshly ground poppy seeds. It gives the dish a pleasant nutty aroma that pairs perfectly with steamed jasmine rice.

The okra vegetables are added at the last minute and provided a nice contrast of color to the meat. Once cooked, they have a slimy quality that blends with the gravy. I've probably mentioned in the past but if you've never tried this unusual vegetable, okra is one of those foods you either love or hate. I personally love them!

We had guests over Tuesday evening from India. I wanted to impress them with the Indian cooking skills I learned from Baji (my husband Lulu's late grandmother). I made one of my favorite Indian curry dishes called korma. It's a spicy curry in which goat meat is slowly stewed in coconut milk.

The key to the dish is the freshness of the meat. I buy my goat meat from a local Indian specialty market. Goat meat is popular in Indian cuisine so there are always fresh, tender cuts available.

Goat korma with okra is a spicy Indian curry dish. We usually serve it when my husband Lulu's family comes over for dinner as the rest of his family isn't vegetarian. To the Western palate, goat meat and okra wouldn't be an obvious choice of ingredients but they're very complementary.

To certain people, goat meat can have a strong taste, but I find that the meat at my local Indian market tastes wonderful and is very tender. Okra has a bad reputation as well due to its texture once boiled. I personally love this dish and could eat it by the pound, dipping rotis (Indian flat bread) in the spicy gravy sauce. At the very least, it’s a dish that will broaden your horizons.

In Urdu, shahi paneer korma would literally translate to braised paneer in "royal" curry. Shahi means royal but when it refers to paneer, it usually indicates a creamy, decadent tomato sauce.

To make the dish I started by quickly stir-frying cubes of paneer. Paneer is Indian-style soft cheese. I made the sauce with caramelized onion paste, yogurt, tomatoes, ginger garlic paste as well as several Indian spices. The paneer pieces are braised at a simmer in the curry sauce until well coated. The final touch is a little heavy cream. It’s not something you want to eat every day, but paneer korma is a perfect dish to make when you want to treat yourself.